Songwriters are getting screwed by streaming media

It occurs to me that most content creation jobs don't exist anymore, that is, 99% songwriters, essayists, and so forth can't make a living. A few do very well and are promoted as examples for others to follow, but practically speaking it's more of a lottery than a career, and most people involved in content creation are never going to support themselves no matter how much they know or how well they create their art.

Platforms are luring millions of people to jump from one get-rich-scheme to another. Each platform has its own technical ways of getting ahead of other creators and locking in content creators and consumers. It feels very much like a serfdom or tenant farming situation, only for entertainment.

If being a content creator means mastering some technical platform or jumping through a bunch of social hoops unrelated to your art, if you spend all of your time feeding the machine, are you really an artist? What happens to art in general?